Day One: Monday

Monday in Easter Week

Acts 1 The Voice

Luke, in this his second volume concerning the genesis of the Christian movement, doesn’t preserve Jesus’ teachings during those mysterious meetings with His emissaries after His death. Surely they are filled with joy, curiosity, and amazement as His followers hang on His every word and gaze on the reality of His bodily resurrection as He describes the kingdom of God. His words are undoubtedly intended to prepare each of them for this journey, a journey with a clear destination in sight—the kingdom of God.

An integral part of this kingdom is the activity of the Holy Spirit to empower the people of God as they expand the kingdom beyond the region of Palestine. Luke records surprisingly little about the day-to-day life of these early Christians, about how they integrated their faith into their culture; but he does emphasize the work of the Spirit who empowers miracles and gives believers the means to testify of their faith before Jews and the outsiders.

1 To a lover of God, Theophilus: In my first book, I recounted the events of Jesus’ life—His actions, His teachings— 2-3 from the beginning of His life until He was taken up into heaven. After His great suffering and vindication, He showed His apostles that He was alive—appearing to them repeatedly over a period of 40 days, giving them many convincing proofs of His resurrection. As before, He spoke constantly of the kingdom of God. During these appearances, He had instructed His chosen messengers through the Holy Spirit, 4 prohibiting them from leaving Jerusalem, but rather requiring them to wait there until they received what He called “the promise of the Father.”

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Not having finished it as a Lenten discipline, I’ve picked up Shan Alexander’s Resurrection Journey as an Easter treat. It’s an imaginative faith account of what Jesus did each of those forty days (Acts 1:3) after Easter that he was up and about. If the Church had Resurrection Journey during the early centuries AD when it was sorting out which writings would be included in the New Testament, it might have been on the short list as Acts of the Risen Christ. 

Today, which the Church calls “Monday in Easter Week,” Shan reports Jesus on his first day of recovery, lying on a pallet in a small room, being ministered to by the same angels who looked after him those forty days in the wilderness; angels who mystically were also the women who followed him about and took care of him during his years of earthly ministry, and who at their own death resumed life as angels in heaven. For one of faith, it seems realistic and reasonable. Alexander is on my Kindle for iPad, and may be my early morning devotional reading during this time leading toward the Ascension, one day at a time.

Tom+ in +Time

Quotations from The Voice taken from BibleGateway, highly recommended as an online source for anyone interested in Bible study.